Today's poem is by Chiyuma Elliott

The Age of Fishes
       

On the new planet, we told stories
about mass extinction. About two black bands
in the rock that smelled like gas.
We had no fossil databases
so we talked about the stars
and the elements. About my mother
with her sun lamp—leaving it on too long
and then swathed in damp washcloths.
About my mother sunbathing naked in the yard,
glistening. Universal histories
in which small plants on the landmass
crept away from the edge of the water
and found no water. It wasn't just me,
we were all equatorial
once. We regarded the rocks
with some skepticism
as they sang about fire.

On the new planet, there were reefs
and it dawned on me
how much I loved them.
Say what you want, but
everything we know comes from people
playing around with ultraviolet
and telling wild tales about jawless fish.

It's hard to explain how abrupt
things were...
On the new planet,
we used nesting dolls to convey
the damage we could see
and the damage we couldn't.
Because my cousin is a lamprey?
My cousin is a huge, fantastic skull
in a museum in Vienna?
Because I depend on them still?
So much depends
on shocked crystals
glistening with rainwater
beside the glowing white lines
on the roads.

Maybe there was a cosmic intervention.
Mount Saint Helens erupted, sure,
it was in all the papers.
One birthday, I got a small oil lamp
made from volcanic ash and its glass
was pleasingly opalescent.
Where did it go?
When did I leave it behind?

In the songs, we were tetrapods
stepping out cautiously.
We were discrete events,
we were mercury.
We staggered out of the water
into the first forests,
looking over our sunburnt shoulders.
We were slow-moving processes
(the opening of seaways)
and there was so little oxygen
and there was so much time.
Everything depends
on a confluence of cascading features.
The rocks sang about fire,
though my cousins were plants
and my other cousins
lived in fresh water
and swam in the seas.

Here are some facts about that planet:
rather grim conditions persisted,
though people kept denying
any extinction event. They favored
other deficit models to explain
the diversification of sharks.
I had a pediatrician.
There are gaps in the records.
Now I look at my hands
and wonder: what kind of evidence
are these ten digits?
What do my hands remember
when my joints feel the weather?

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Copyright © 2023 Chiyuma Elliott All rights reserved
from Colorado Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission